After having tried the residency experience and repeated it twice, the Champagne-Ardenne region again called in the Transfo in 2011 to focus on youth during the new mandate. Although a specific regional public agency devoted to young people existed, governance was shared among administrative departments. As is often the case, the need to work across organizational boundaries sometimes collides with official instructions and customary ways of doing and is impeded by a lack of time.
How should the need to satisfy the hierarchal structure, the requirements of civil servants and the needs of youth be handled? More broadly, how can civil servants be inspired to work together differently and account for the actual practices of users? To achieve this, 13 reference persons from the various departments concerned were designated to participate in the program. After having successfully completed several projects (the re-design of Region Youth encounters, finding ways to increase the use of the Lycéo card), the team then tackled questions relating to setting up an in-house innovation lab: values, operating principles, organizational structure, budget, decision-making circuit, etc. Their proposal was submitted for approval to executive management in February 2014 to allow for recruiting a project manager, and the doors of the lab officially opened in February 2015.
